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Munich Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for strong graphic violence, some sexual content, nudity and language) Genre: Historical, Thriller Theater release: January 06, 2006 by Universal Pictures Directed by: Steven Spielberg Runtime: 2 hours 44 minutes Cast: Eric Bana (Avner), Geoffrey Rush (Ephraim), Ciarán Hinds (Carl), Daniel Craig (Steve), Mathieu Kassovitz (Robert), Hanns Zischler (Hans), Marie-José;e Croze (Jeanette), Mathieu Amalric (Louis), Michael Lonsdale (Papa), Lynn Cohen (Golda Meir), Gila Almagor (Avner's Mother) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Munich takes place about 30 years ago, but it may be the most urgent film Steven Spielberg has ever made. While Spielberg has made a few historical movies before, so far they have all concerned events that took place well before he was born, and it doesn't exactly require a whole lot of courage these days to say that slavery and the Holocaust were wrong. Munich, on the other hand, is the first to depict an event that occurred during Spielberg's own lifetime, the ramifications of which are still being felt, and debated, today.

The film begins in September 1972, when Palestinian terrorists captured and murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The initial violence as the terrorists break into the athletes' suites is blunt, and brutal. And when the authorities respond, they screw up royally; among other things, they have to call off a rescue mission when it turns out the movements of their snipers have been broadcast on TV, where the terrorists can see everything. In one scene, Spielberg puts his camera inside the room as a terrorist steps out onto a balcony, his image transmitted to a TV nearby the door—and there is a palpable tension between the archival video footage and the actor re-enacting it off to the side, just as there is a tension between our knowledge of what will happen and our hope that things might turn out differently (between fate and free will, as it were).

Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) and wife Daphna (Ayelet Zurer) celebrate the birth of their baby

The bulk of the film, however, takes place after the Olympics, when the Israeli government responds to the incident by sending a counter-terrorist team to Europe and other points around the Mediterranean to find and execute 11 Palestinian leaders. The film is based on George Jonas's book Vengeance—previously filmed in 1986 as the TV-movie Sword of Gideon—and it follows a Mossad agent known only as Avner (Eric Bana) as he leads four fellow agents on a mission that, ironically, requires them to think and act a little like terrorists themselves. Jonas's book, which relies heavily on Avner's memories of events that took place a decade or more before, has been the focus of much controversy itself, and it is beyond the scope of this review to say how accurate it is. For now, suffice to say that the screenplay, by playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), follows it fairly closely.

The mission begins when Avner, an agent with a pregnant wife, is summoned to the home of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) and introduced to Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), the Mossad chief who trains him and puts his team together. (Interestingly, Jonas's book claims that the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was also present at this meeting and a "hero" to Avner, but unless my ears blinked, the film leaves him out of this scene.) Avner is told he will have to resign from the agency, to become "officially unofficial," and he will have to leave Israel and his nascent family for months at a time, maybe even years. Despite being off the books, though, Avner will still have to produce receipts.

Generals Harari (Moshe Ivgy) and Zamir (Ami Weinberg) and discuss plans with Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen)

There is humor in details like this, and Spielberg finds other moments of tense amusement in what is otherwise a deadly serious story. In one scene, Avner and his teammates—bombs expert Robert (Amelie's Mathieu Kassovitz), cars expert Steve (future James Bond Daniel Craig), documents expert Hans (Hanns Zischler), and clean-up man Carl (Ciarán Hinds)—find themselves sharing a safe house with some Arab terrorists, and after they get over the initial surprise, they have a small contest of wills over radio station preferences. Spielberg also deftly cranks up the tension in other scenes, like the one where a girl unexpectedly returns home to her father, just as Avner's team is about to blow him up.

In some ways, Spielberg is less emotionally manipulative in this film than he has been in his other movies; when Avner tells his wife, "You're the only home I've ever had," Spielberg treats the moment matter-of-factly and even allows Avner's wife to burst out laughing and call his sentiments "so corny." But the way Spielberg systematically tweaks the events recounted in Jonas's book does add up to a political statement of sorts. For one thing, he accentuates the collateral damage pretty much all the way through, though at least some of the earlier victims were killed rather discretely; according to Jonas, at least, the first explosion was inaudible and did not shatter any windows, contrary to what we see here. The film also downplays, perhaps even eliminates, Ephraim's insistence that absolutely no innocent bystanders are to be injured. While Avner's team does run into problems later on, it might have been better if Spielberg had allowed us to experience the early "successes" of the mission as successes, before moving on to the hits that went a little wrong.

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